Hello!
I'm a new member in this site and I want to learn finnish. I love Finland! But I can't speak in that language.
If someone is interesting in teach me Finnish I will be very happy!!
Lot of kisses
Laura,

Right now there aren't any active teachers in Finnish around here (maybe more in the chat?), but there are a couple of natives and other learners who know stuff, so if you have any questions to ask about Finnish grammar or anything, just post them here somewhere and I'm sure someone will gladly answer you with an explanation !

There are also language resources elsewhere on UniLang, the excersise center and story center, for example. There are a few Finnish things in there, too.

I am interested in learning Finnish too, and right now the "help" topic looks like a good place to enter. (You can find some resources through the Unilang main page, by the way...)

There was a course where I work, led by a finnish teacher. Alas, she doesn't seem to be a Finnish teacher...

I asked about the distinction between "-lainen" and "-ksi" ("soumalainen" and "suomeksi"), but did not get wiser. Now I see that in the VSL group, the Finnish entry is called "Finnish (Suomi)". Unless someone confused it, i am confused!

Will someone explain? (Preferably in English, as my Finnish is not yet usable.)

Suomi - Finland
suomi - Finnish (the language)
suomen kieli - Finnish (the language) (lit. the language of Finnish)
suomenkielinen - something in the language of Finnish (a text, f ex) OR a person who speaks Finnish
suomalainen - a Finn OR a thing of Finnish origin
suomen kielellä - in the language of Finnish
suomeksi - in the language of Finnish OR (change) into the language of Finnish
Suomeksi - (change) into Finland (the country)

I am very curious about Finnish, especially its grammar and its vocabulary. Unfortunately I haven't got time to spend on it, as I already made other choices. I hope you will not misjudge and look down on my interest. This is also easier to ask here than looking for explanations elsewhere.

JunMing wrote: I am very curious about Finnish, especially its grammar and its vocabulary. Unfortunately I haven't got time to spend on it, as I already made other choices. I hope you will not misjudge and look down on my interest. This is also easier to ask here than looking for explanations elsewhere.

JunMing wrote:If at the end, "suomeksi" is replaced by "Suomeksi", will it mean "and get along in Finland"? If so, is the difference only based on the context?

No, because as you can see in the list above, only the word "suomeksi" has two meanings, one of them being "in Finnish". The word "Suomeksi" can only mean "(change) into Finland".

JunMing wrote:Also about these:

suomenkielinen - something in the language of Finnish (a text, f ex) OR a person who speaks Finnishsuomalainen - a Finn OR a thing of Finnish origin

I saw that adding the suffix "-lainen" to a place name denotes the origin of something. Does "-nen" mean the same? Can it stand alone? How do you say person?

"Nen" can't stand alone. It's a suffix, which has many meanings in Finnish, the most common being that it makes the word an adjective. "-lainen" is actually derived from "laji" (kind, species), to which -nen is added. "-lainen" therefore translates as "of kind x" or "of origin x".

JunMing wrote:Sorry for the trouble, and don't lose too much time on this post... Yes/no answers and a few words will be enough.

JunMing wrote: I am very curious about Finnish, especially its grammar and its vocabulary. Unfortunately I haven't got time to spend on it, as I already made other choices. I hope you will not misjudge and look down on my interest. This is also easier to ask here than looking for explanations elsewhere.

JunMing wrote:If at the end, "suomeksi" is replaced by "Suomeksi", will it mean "and get along in Finland"? If so, is the difference only based on the context?

No, because as you can see in the list above, only the word "suomeksi" has two meanings, one of them being "in Finnish". The word "Suomeksi" can only mean "(change) into Finland".

JunMing wrote:Also about these:

suomenkielinen - something in the language of Finnish (a text, f ex) OR a person who speaks Finnishsuomalainen - a Finn OR a thing of Finnish origin

I saw that adding the suffix "-lainen" to a place name denotes the origin of something. Does "-nen" mean the same? Can it stand alone? How do you say person?

"Nen" can't stand alone. It's a suffix, which has many meanings in Finnish, the most common being that it makes the word an adjective. "-lainen" is actually derived from "laji" (kind, species), to which -nen is added. "-lainen" therefore translates as "of kind x" or "of origin x".

Thanks a lot for all your explanations!

I am curious about a few more things though...

You said "Suomessa" is inessive. Because of my ignorance, I never saw this word (;)). I checked on wikipedia and the explanation is probably interesting enough to be shared:

Wikipedia wrote:Inessive case is a locative grammatical case. This case carries the basic meaning of "in": for example, "in the house" is "talo·ssa" in Finnish, "maja·s" in Estonian, and "ház·ban" in Hungarian.

In Finnish the inessive case is typically formed by adding "ssa/ssä". Estonian adds "s" to the genitive stem. In Hungarian, the suffix "ban/ben" is most commonly used for inessive case, although many others, such as -on, -en, -ön and others are also used, especially with cities.

In the Finnish language, the inessive case is considered the first of the six locative cases, which correspond to locational prepositions in English. The remaining five cases are:

JunMing wrote:Sorry for the trouble, and don't lose too much time on this post... Yes/no answers and a few words will be enough.

You have to accept complete sentenses this time .

I said that because I didn't want to annoy you or anyone else...

keme wrote:About the "-nen" question from JunMing: I don't think he meant litterally "alone", but rather if it is a suffix with a meaning of its own. (If I misread one of you, I apologise!)

I actually meant both. At the same time whether is has a meaning of its own, and if it is a standalone word (which might be of a longer form). Now I know the answer to both answers is no.

To Varislintu: I remember I read somewhere else (don't ask me where!) that you study (or studied) some Japanese, and that you are surprised by the several similitudes it shares with your native language. Could you give more details please?

keme wrote:Why is "-nen" added? Is it to distinguish a derived adjective from a compound noun, or is it just phonetic, for the speech to flow easier?

Yes, it's to distinguish an adjective. "Laji" in itself does not describe. The -nen is needed to make it an adjective type of word:

Viha (=anger)Vihainen (=angry)

The difference between "-lainen" and just "-nen" is that "-lainen" also contains meaning of origin, and therefore is used for people:

Helsinki (=Helsinki, the capital of Finland)helsinkinen (="Helsinki-ish")helsinkiläinen (=Helsinkian, a person from Helsinki)

JunMing wrote:

keme wrote:About the "-nen" question from JunMing: I don't think he meant litterally "alone", but rather if it is a suffix with a meaning of its own. (If I misread one of you, I apologise!)

I actually meant both. At the same time whether is has a meaning of its own, and if it is a standalone word (which might be of a longer form). Now I know the answer to both answers is no.

I just want to make sure I explained clearly:

As a suffix, the "-nen" can stand alone, as it does in the above word "vihainen".

JunMing wrote:To Varislintu: I remember I read somewhere else (don't ask me where!) that you study (or studied) some Japanese, and that you are surprised by the several similitudes it shares with your native language. Could you give more details please?

Thanks again!

Well, I started studying Japanese with the understanding that it was going to be something extremely alien, with very little grammatical similarities to anything I know. But this image must have been put into my head by English speakers, because Japanese can be said to be more like Finnish than English. This doesn't mean, of course, that Finnish and Japanese are very much alike, it's just in comparison to English. Here's what makes me think this way (and I apologise for my bad linguistic vocab):

- Pronounciation is on many parts much like Finnish
- Particles in Japanese come after the word they point to, just like suffixes do in Finnish (in Finnish there are suffixes instead of particles).
- The Japanese "ka" that marks a question, is similar to the "-ko/-kö" suffix in Finnish
- The Japanese posessive particle "no" is similar to the genitive suffix "-n" in Finnish
- I've always imagined that the Japanese "yo" works a bit like the Finnish suffix "-pa/-pä". I haven't had anyone to confirm this with, though.
- Japanese seems to have quite a few expressions, where repetition of the word is used, as does Finnish (J:"mada mada"/ F:"vähä vähältä").